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DR. HADDOCK'S DISCOURSE 



BEFORE THE 



RHETORICAL SOCIETY, 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT BANGOR, ME,, 



AUGUST 30, 1843. 



SJje reliance of (Efjrfstfanfts on its pttntsters. 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



RHETORICAL SOCIETY, 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT BANGOR, ME, 



AUGUST 30, 1843. 



BY CHARLES b! HADDOCK, D. D. 

Professor of Intellectual Philosophy, &c, in Dartmouth College. 



BOSTON: 



PRINTED BY CROCKER AND BREWSTER, 

47 Washington-street, 

1843. 






Bangor, Aug. 30th, 1843. 
Dear Sir : 

At a meeting of the Rhetorical Society, the following resolution 
was unanimously adopted : 

Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be presented to Pro- 
fessor Haddock, for his able and eloquent Discourse, and that a 
copy of the same be requested for publication. 

STEPHEN H. HAYES, ) 

JOSIAH MERRILL. V Committee. 

THOMAS G. MITCHELL, 5 

Rev. Professor Haddock. 









DISCOURSE. 



Revealed truth has this in common with all 
other truth, that it is taught and maintained by 
human instrumentalities. Supernatural in its ori- 
gin, and accompanied by extraordinary spiritual 
agencies, it is, nevertheless, applied to the minds 
of men by means. And, in general, the means, 
adapted to give effect to other truth, are no less 
fitted, and no less necessary, to recommend and 
enforce that which came immediately from God. 

In casting about me for a subject not unsuited to 
the present occasion, my thoughts have fallen upon 
the means on which the Christian Religion chiefly 
depends — the agency of a living ministry. The 
gospel relies mainly, it is obvious, upon personal 
influence. It is sustained and propagated by the 
living preacher. 

In other modes of worship the priesthood has been 
but an appendage of the temple and the altar ; the 
sacred place and the sacrifice have been preferred 



above the pontiff. The ministers of religion have 
not been always even a distinct order ; and, except 
under Christianity, have never, in themselves, 
been the principal support of the worship they 
administer. The ideas, which uninspired men 
have formed of the spiritual and the infinite, they 
have, generally, sought to express and to fix in 
material forms. Structures of enduring masonry, 
statues of the gods, costly and mysterious rites, 
have been resorted to, to represent and perpetuate 
among men, the great principles of religious belief, 
which their unassisted reason has seemed to dis- 
cover, and which, distorted and corrupted, con- 
founded with errors and obscured by superstitions, 
have, yet, been the leading element in the educa- 
tion of every people. 

Even the Jewish worship, though comparatively 
pure and spiritual, was, in no small degree, nour- 
ished by sensible images and consecrated forms. 
The tabernacle, with its golden furniture, its ark 
and altar and mercy seat ; the robes of Aaron, the 
ephod, the breastplate and the mitre, all of cunning 
workmanship, glowing with purple and scarlet 
dyes, and jeweled with the emerald, the diamond 
and all precious stones ; the oracular Urim and 
Thummim ; the wondrous cloud and fire of the 
Divine presence ; and, in after ages, the temple, 
enriched with the offerings of piety and the tro- 
phies of holy warfare — these outward, visible 
things, were the secret of the charm, which bound 
the Jew to the city of his solemnities. These 
made him to prefer Jerusalem above his chief joy. 



For these he wept, when he hung his harp on the 
willows, and sat down by the rivers of Babylon. 

In thus imparting a high significance to visible 
forms, there is nothing unreasonable or unnatural. 
There is, rather, something beautiful in the idea of 
giving a tongue to inanimate nature, making the 
hues of the sun and the gems of the earth our 
teachers ; something grand in the thought of en- 
graving our wisdom and our duty upon the perma- 
nent material of nature, the everlasting rock ; 
something grateful to the heart, amid the changes 
of life, in surrounding ourselves, on either hand and 
above, with enduring records of spiritual and living 
truth. The wisest of men die ; the most eloquent 
lips soon cease to impart knowledge. It would 
seem, therefore, but a natural wish to give greater 
permanence and a more venerable authority to 
truth, than is entirely consistent with this transient 
life of ours. And, certainly, there is a solemn elo- 
quence, a reverend grandeur in those mysterious 
monuments of genius and piety, which, in Amer- 
ica, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, all over the 
world, have outlived the memory of their builders, 
and still utter their sublime lessons of primeval 
wisdom. 

Wherever to these outward emblems have been 
added the influence of civil authority and of a di- 
vine right in the priesthood, the Machinery of re- 
ligion has been complete. The power of circum- 
stance and form has here attained its utmost height- 
Personal qualities, mere weight of character, intel- 
lect, eloquence, piety, in the sacred office, have 



6 

here been last and least among the elements of 
ecclesiastical power. The individual appears lost 
in the order ; the order, but an accident, a neces- 
sary accident of the system ; the system, a colossal 
structure, built up by the gradual accumulation of 
ages, and become, by insensible degrees, the agent 
of opinion, rather than its instrument ; dictating to 
the reason, moulding the taste, and prescribing to 
the conscience ; presenting, in history, the humili- 
ating spectacle of free heaven-born mind paying 
homage to a creature of its own. 

The Christian Religion discovers profounder 
views of our nature. It goes upon higher ideas of 
our true dignity and spiritual character ; and in 
this respect, as in so many others, betrays its su- 
perhuman origin. Revelation, which so humbles 
his pride, is, at the same time, the greatest honor 
ever put upon man. It supposes in him capacities 
hitherto undeveloped to himself. It assumes the 
existence of elements of moral greatness in his na- 
ture, which no philosophy had detected. It takes 
for granted his capacity for a high spiritual life. 
It abandons the whole apparatus of forms and 
shows and outward monuments ; puts away the 
childish things of the world's infancy ; and gives 
us, in their stead, intellectual, manly, spiritual 
principles. 

Even in Jerusalem, while the temple was yet 
standing, and men had no idea, that the Father of 
the Universe could be truly worshipped any where 
else, the apostles, with power, if need were, to 
evoke a more gorgeous temple from the earth, 



were content to be gathered together in an upper 
room of a private house. And in Greece, taught 
by her poets and artists to associate the worship 
of the Gods with whatever of beauty genius had 
executed or taste designed, in architecture and 
sculpture, the same apostles met their disciples by 
the river's side, or in the school of Tyrannus. 
The temple, in which a Savior promised had been 
so long adored, might have been consecrated to a 
Savior come ; its imposing service might have been 
made to turn the eye of faith backward as well as 
forward. There would have been something ap- 
propriate and consonant with our best feelings, in 
the idea of devoting the house of David to the wor- 
ship of the Son of David. It would have seemed 
eminently fit and useful, that he, who had been 
foreshadowed, in the sacrifices of the sanctuary, to 
the generations, who died before the sight, should 
be set forth in the same holy place, as the risen and 
glorified Redeemer of all generations. But this 
work of ages, the pride of Jewish faith and the 
wonder of the nations, was to be of no more ac- 
count. It had accomplished its purpose. A new 
order of things was to succeed. And the glory of 
Jerusalem was suffered to pass away ; not one 
stone was left upon another. The line of the 
priesthood was ended ; the altar of incense, as 
well as the altar of sacrifice, was thrown down. 
The dispensation of Forms was superseded by a 
dispensation of the Spirit. 

To Christianity an outward existence was hardly 
given. The kingdom of heaven was set up within 



8 

men ; it came not with observation. The life of 
piety was awakened in the soul ; the principle of 
love was implanted in the heart ; the spirit of wor- 
ship was quickened into fervid action. But every 
thing external was left very much to the instinctive 
suggestions of the new born spirit. The sensual 
was thus subordinated to the spiritual ; the formal, 
to the essential. The inward was developed in 
the outward ; not the outward made to develope 
the inward. The enlarged thoughts and rectified 
feelings of the regenerate were trusted to unfold 
themselves in natural forms, subject to no law but 
their own impulses. The principle of spiritual 
life, the supernatural element in the new creature, 
became, to the moral man, what the principle of 
animal, or of vegetable life, is to the physical man 
or the plant, a central, organic power, evolving 
and manifesting itself spontaneously — symmetri- 
cally and appropriately embodying itself; a power 
impatient of coercion or direction from without, 
but, when left perfectly free, naturally taking to 
itself a form as becoming and as graceful as the 
uncramped child or unforced tree. 

Hence the absence of prescribed forms of devo- 
tion and modes of organization in the New Testa- 
ment. Hence the remarkable obscurity which 
rests on the institution of the Christian Sabbath, 
the mode and subjects of christian baptism, the 
calling and ordination of the clergy, the discipline 
and constitution of the church, and the whole mat- 
ter of ecclesiastical order. A single chapter, one 
is ready to think, might have made all plain. The 



space taken up by our Lord's commentary on the 
moral law, would have determined, with equal 
clearness, questions of mode and order, which have 
filled the world with bitterness and violence. But 
that space is not given to the subject ; that chap- 
ter is not written. 

There was, undoubtedly, a primitive order and a 
primitive discipline. A church was formed ; a 
ministry instituted ; an outward worship adopted. 
But the particular organization of the church, the 
precise mode of ordination, the exact manner of 
worship are left, to say the least, in much indis- 
tinctness, if not uncertainty. Is there not a strik- 
ing difference, in this respect, between the formal 
and the doctrinal part of Christianity ? A remark- 
able difference, in point of clearness and promi- 
nence between the facts, which relate to the essen- 
tials of our religion, and the facts which respect its 
forms ? Can it have been wholly without design, 
that the two only rites enjoined upon christians 
were the simplest possible for ends, which could 
not otherwise be answered, the one as a visible 
profession of Christ, and the other, as a periodical 
public recognition of him ? And that even these 
simple rites were not original, nor instituted with 
any show of importance ; but were only Jewish 
practices transferred, without ceremony, from their 
primitive use ? Does it not look very much as if 
it had been intended, in this way, to intimate to 
after ages, that, although Christianity must, of ne- 
cessity, have a visible existence, and, therefore, a 
form of existence, this form was left to be deter- 



10 



mined by the circumstances and the judgment of 
the worshippers ; and that, beyond the necessities 
of the case, the less of form and circumstance there 
might be, the safer and wiser, on the whole, would 
be the organization of the church ? 

It is difficult to resist the impression from the 
whole history of the New Testament, that the care 
of all the inspired writers, as well as of the great 
Founder of our religion himself, was directed 
chiefly to the inward spirit of piety, not to the out- 
ward manifestation of it ; to the divine truths, by 
which this spirit is nourished, not to modes and 
means. They seem studiously to rebuke the ven- 
eration of their times for sacred places and holy 
days. "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither 
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship 
the Father." "The true worshippers shall worship 
the Father in spirit and in truth." "But now after 
that ye have known God, or, rather, are known of 
Him, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly 
elements, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage ? 
Ye observe days and months and times and years." 

One mode of worship and one ecclesiastical or- 
der may be more evangelical than others, nearer to 
the primitive model. I doubt not that they are so, 
and may be fairly defended by a careful induction 
from the historical records of the New Testament. 
But this very induction is itself proof, that out- 
ward forms are not insisted on, not made promi- 
nent in the new dispensation. Why the need of 
careful distinction, of cautious inference, of dili- 
gent comparison, in determining questions of mode 



11 

and order ? The obvious appearance, to a cursory 
reader of these Divine records, is precisely that 
which an apostle has described, where he speaks 
of " the light of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus Christ, shining in the hearts" of the early 
preachers — reflected from them as from a mirror ; 
and where he represents the gospel as " a trea- 
sure in earthen vessels" as great, vital, glorious 
truths, hidden from the foundation of the world, 
but now made known to simple minded, sensible 
men, who, thenceforth, felt it to be their sacred 
mission, day and night, by land and sea, at home 
and in the ends of the earth, to proclaim what 
they had seen and heard. 

Without letters of authority from prince or 
priest, without staff or scrip, relying on the prom- 
ise of Christ, and the power of an earnest soul, 
they went forth, preaching every where, and tes- 
tifying to every man, " repentance toward God 
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. 5 ' By 
the word, the pure word of life, the word of God, 
these honest and fearless men achieved the moral 
victory, of which the prophets had spoken. Cho- 
sen from the humblest walks of life, without fam- 
ily, without titles, with no associations of wealth 
or office, distinguished only by their personal qual- 
ities, their enterprise and patience, their lofty 
principles and sublime virtue, their thoughtful, 
quiet, beautiful spirit, their zeal for God and their 
charity to men, they could undertake any thing. 
Rich in the seed of truth and full of faith in God, 
they counted the World their field. Clad in the 



12 



whole armor of God, they did battle as good sol- 
diers of Jesus Christ, and saw the dawn of peace, 
that blessed peace, under whose gentle reign "the 
wolf shall dwell with the lamb ; and the leopard 
shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the 
young lion and the fading together ; and a little 
child shall lead them." 

It were not quite proper to say, that Christianity 
rejects altogether the aid of outward institutions, 
and refuses to assume a visible, or even an estab- 
lished form. A purely spiritual worship is not of 
this world, if it be of any world. Social worship, 
here at least, requires a place of worship and a 
mode of administration. These are necessary 
means of mutual sympathy in praise and prayer. 
The intercourse of our spirits is through the me- 
dium of sensible things. A common altar, a com- 
mon temple, and common rites, are means of 
spiritual communion. About these time gathers 
hallowed associations. They acquire, by use and 
habit, a holy significance, and thus become im- 
portant auxiliaries of truth and devotion. They 
cherish salutary affections, and bind the heart 
more strongly to great and holy objects. 

It is a distinctive feature of the Gospel, how- 
ever, that it leaves these outward institutions and 
observances, for the most part, to be determined 
by the principle of spiritual life within. It as- 
sumes that they, in whom this principle has been 
implanted by the Holy Ghost, are not incapable 
of corresponding ideas of fitness and utility in 
external things. It puts honor upon the "new 



13 

creature " by committing to him a degree of re- 
sponsibility, a trust, a discretion in these matters. 
Accordingly, men are no where, in the New 
Testament, commissioned to build up a church, to 
establish a hierarchy, to found an order, to set up 
institutions ; but to preach, to teach, to save souls, 
to publish the gospel of God to every creature. 
To support them in this arduous enterprise, they 
are promised, not the aid of the civil arm, nor of 
engines of ecclesiastical power, but " a mouth and 
wisdom" which kings and mighty men should 
" not be able to gainsay or resist." With erecting 
cathedrals, engraving crosses upon churches or 
graves, hallowing days, canonizing saints, what 
had the primitive missionaries of Christ to do ? 
From the great common concerns of government 
even they kept altogether aloof, paying tribute to 
Csesar, and going quietly about their Master's 
business. In the brief history of their labors by 
Saint Luke, what is so remarkable as the personal 
incidents of the narrative ? The story of the 
cripple, who sat for alms at the beautiful gate of 
the temple ; of Cornelius, the centurion ; of the 
sorceress and the jailor at Philippi ; of Lydia, the 
seller of purple ; of the eunuch of ^Ethiopia ; of 
iEneas and Dorcas and Surgius Paulus ; of Annas 
and Sapphira, Simon Magus, and Elymas ; of Fe- 
lix and Agrippa — who reads the simple, touching 
relation of the interviews of the apostles with 
these persons, of all ranks and occupations and 
character, and does not feel, how very far were 
the thoughts of those divine men from any thing 



14 



and every thing else but the good of souls, the 
conversion and salvation of every human creature ? 
Who does not see of how little moment it seemed 
to them, who wore the royal purple or sat in the 
seat of earthly judgment ; of how little moment, 
who triumphed or suffered defeat in the conflicts 
of ambition ; of how little moment, under what 
names or in what forms men worshipped the 
Father; and of what great, what unspeakable 
importance, seemed to them the inward state, the 
essential condition of every living soul, every 
responsible creature of God ? How impossible it 
is to forget, as we peruse the narrative of Luke, 
or the Epistles of his associates, how utterly insig- 
nificant and worthless is every thing outward and 
circumstantial, all rites and offices and titles under 
heaven, in comparison with the real moral, spirit- 
ual character of the man — the individual, self- 
knowing, solitary Soul, responsible to God only, and 
incapable of help or harm from the whole world. 

It is, therefore, inconsistent with the whole 
spirit of Christianity, for us to be insisting on 
modes and forms. It is tithing mint and cummin. 
And if so be the necessary institutions are main- 
tained, the simpler and the less conspicuous the 
machinery of our religion, the more christian and 
the better it is. The essential things, are the 
truth and the men to preach it. And, inasmuch 
as the truth remains unchanged, the difference of 
effect from it, at different periods, must be owing 
to the difference in the personal qualities, the effec- 
tive energy of its preachers. 



15. 

What then, I proceed to inquire, are the pecu- 
liar responsibilities of the christian minister at the 
present day ? 

The feeling has, of late, been evidently growing 
in the public mind, and more particularly among 
the better educated of our younger divines and 
candidates for the ministry, that the Puritan fa- 
thers, with truth and right on their side, and the 
noblest traits of our nature in their hearts, fell, 
nevertheless, into the common error of humanity, 
and pushed the Reformation to an extreme. It 
would have been as well, some have thought, if 
their righteous indignation at the abuses of the 
church had been a little less unsparing, and their 
zeal for simplicity somewhat more tolerant. It 
would, no doubt, have better pleased a taste ma- 
tured by converse with our earlier authors, and 
with the monuments of the piety and charity of 
an earlier age, in the land of our ancestors, if, in 
the wholesome pruning of the tree, the axe had 
spared a little more of the foliage, and left the 
goodly trunk not quite so naked, and the blushing 
fruit not quite so open to the sun. 

Many of the Fathers would themselves have 
appreciated these feelings. They found it a sac- 
rifice to go out from the ancient altars, where, 
from the beginning, they had kneeled down. They 
felt it to be a sacrifice to renounce the silent 
society of the saints, who, in their quiet sanctu- 
aries, had held converse with the holy dead of so 
many generations. It was self-denial to abjure 
forever the rites of gray antiquity. 



16 



I do not wonder, that many a spirit lingered 
and hesitated, and but half consented. Luther, a 
man of genius and a scholar, had also the yet 
rarer gift of a nerve to bear, without flinching, 
the cutting off of a right hand, or the plucking 
out of a right eye. Melancthon, as richly en- 
dowed, and more chastened and humanized by 
letters, fondly hoped, and hoped, to save the honor 
of his Divine master, and yet be permitted to live 
with two hands and two eyes. Melancthon was, 
perhaps, the more perfect character ; certainly, the 
gentler and more beautiful spirit, the finer model 
for ordinary life in ordinary times ; but we may 
not forget, that, if there had been no Luther, 
there had been no Melancthon. Sometimes the 
pruning knife must be used with an unsparing 
hand, if you would bring out the green, fresh 
foliage all over the rugged trunk of the tree. 

I can well comprehend how a young man, nur- 
tured among the bald edifices and crude institu- 
tions of the new world, is, on crossing the sea, 
somewhat awed by the composed dignity and 
sovereign voice of the queen of the Seven Hills. 
It is not strange, that a thoughtful student of the 
old English mind, sometimes regrets, that so wide 
a sea lies between him and the fair forms, about 
which are wreathed so much of the history and 
poetry of the old world. Still less is it to be won- 
dered at, that, in a country of perpetual change ; 
a country, where a man hardly thinks to die in 
the house in which his children were born ; where 
something better is always taking the place of that 






17 

which is only good, men who love to be quiet, 
who long to find any thing that is still, turn a 
wishful eye to what, if it lacks perfection, has at 
least the semblance of stability. It is, I hope, no 
sin, to prefer the " dim religious light ' ? of a Gothic 
church, in the church yard, to a glaring meeting- 
house, on the windy and dusty hill top that over- 
looks the village. May not one be pardoned for 
choosing a modest parsonage, a little out of the air 
of the town, amid the new mown hay and the green 
wood, sweet with the honey-suckle and the eglan- 
tine, the home of many a reverend man and more 
reverend woman, in preference to the one half of 
a brick building, with a gutter before and a pump- 
house behind, and fervid noon all over head ? 

There is wholesome authority, it must be con- 
fessed, in time honored usage ; a tranquilizing 
and not unimproving influence, in becoming forms, 
entirely consistent with an intellectual and spirit- 
ual worship. Taste may minister to devotion ; 
the beauty of outward nature is in harmony with 
truth and goodness. It cannot be that natural 
grandeur and loveliness should really be at war 
with the spiritual affections. The God of grace 
is the God of nature too. Nor are the christian 
arts, necessarily, foes to faith. The Holy Spirit 
has condescended to invest divine truths with the 
drapery of poetry ; and there is no reason in the 
nature of these arts, why painting or sculpture 
should be incapable of a religious use. 

But then there is a higher philosophy than the 
philosophy of the beautiful — a philosophy not al- 



18 

ways practicable in this imperfect state without 
some sacrifice of taste. Things lawful may not 
be expedient ; the lesser good must, sometimes, 
be foregone for the sake of the greater. 

What, then, I ask, is the peculiar duty of the 
clergy at the present day ? This question will be 
more easily answered, if we first answer another, 
viz : What are the peculiar tendencies of the pres- 
ent time in things pertaining to the sphere of the 
clergy ? Is Christianity in danger of being too 
much or too little reformed ? Are we tending to 
spiritualism or to formalism ? 

Mr. Macaulay, in his Review of Ranke's His- 
tory of the Popes, in 1841, expressed the opinion, 
that Protestantism had gained nothing in two 
hundred and fifty years ; that the Pope had 
acquired more in America than he ever lost in 
Europe ; that he was regaining what he had lost 
there, and has had at no time more reason to an- 
ticipate a universal spiritual dominion, than under 
the influence of the civilization of the nineteenth 
century. 

These startling statements appeared, at the 
time, not a little extraordinary. But subsequent 
events, if they have not confirmed them, have at 
least given them new interest, as the deliberate 
sentiments of one of the ablest writers of the 
day. It can no longer be doubted, that, in the 
heart of protestant Europe, a movement has com- 
menced, as yet difficult to measure and appreciate, 
but unquestionable in its tendency and fraught 
with infinite hazard to the peace, if not to the 



19 

permanence of the reformed church. In this re- 
markable movement, strange as it seems, there 
has lately been discovered a hearty and wide 
spread sympathy on this side of the sea. New 
demonstrations of hostility to Protestantism in 
France and Prussia, though hardly expected, 
create of course no great surprise. Not so in 
England and America. The movement in these 
free states attracts the notice, not to say the won- 
der of the world. The truth is too plain, that, 
for one reason or another, the attitude of the most 
important governments of the European continent, 
and of respectable portions of the reformed 
church itself, in Great Britain and the United 
States, is any thing but auspicious to the cause 
of protestant Christianity. The public authority 
has, in some instances, over-stepped the restraints, 
which public opinion was supposed to have laid 
upon it throughout Christendom, and has enlisted 
force and violence, again, in the propagation of the 
national faith. Learning has come forth from the 
schools of a protestant country, to revive an anti- 
quated worship. 

Poetry has not withheld her aid in this remark- 
able change in the turn of public thought and 
sentiment, lingering, for some years past, with 
unwonted delight, among the monuments of a 
more imposing worship ; and investing the gray 
ruin and the obsolete rite with the two-fold charm 
of hallowed antiquity. 

Keble and Wordsworth have been doing some- 
thing to attune the English ear, once more, to 



20 

Matins and Vespers, Paternosters and Ave Marias, 
and to reconcile the English heart to saints and 
abbeys. Kebie, a true, sweet child of christian 
song, twin spirit of holy George Herbert, a poetic 
impersonation of good Master Hooker and honest 
Isaac Walton, has so strung his " Thoughts in 
Verse " upon the thread of the festivals of the 
church, so woven the golden filaments of poetry 
into the liturgy, that minds a little sensitive to 
soothing and tranquilizing strains, overlook the 
great principles of faith in the quietism of feeling ; 
truth becomes sublimated to poetry ; and fresh 
wreaths seem to them to be twined about the 
head of every saint in the calendar. 

Wordsworth, a much greater poet, in his " Ec- 
clesiastical Sketches," leaves us every now and 
then to wonder what manner of Protestant he is. 
He indeed condemns the rites " that trample upon 
soul and sense," 

" The trumpery that ascends in bare display- 
Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls, black, white and gray." 

But his tones of indignation, now and then, soften 
to regret and sympathy. Thus he laments the 
dissolution of the monasteries : 

" Threats come, which no submission may assuage, 
No sacrifice avert ; no power dispute ; 
The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute ; 
And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage, 
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage ; 
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit ; 
And the green lizard and the gilded newt 
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.*' 



21 



" The lovely Nun, (submissive, but more meek 
Through saintly habit than from effort due 
To unrelenting mandates that pursue 
With equal wrath, the steps of strong and weak) 
Goes forth — unveiling timidly her cheek 
Suffused with blushes of celestial hue, 
While through the convent gate to open view 
Softly she glides another home to seek. 
Not Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine, 
An apparition more divinely bright." 

•U. -U. *U> AC- •&■ *U. «U. 

*A* "A* "Tr *rt* *7P •?? "TV" 

" Ye, too, must fly before the chasing hand, 
Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned ! 
Ah ! if the old idolatry be spurned, 
Let not your radiant shapes desert the land." 
# # # # # # # 

" Mother ! whose virgin bosom was uncrost 
With the least shade of thought to sin allied, 
Woman ! above all women glorified, 
Our tainted nature's solitary boast ; 
Purer than foam on central ocean tossed j 
Brighter than eastern skies at day break strewn 
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon, 
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast; 
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, 
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, 
As to a visible power, in which did blend, 
AH that was mixed and reconciled in thee 
Of mother's love with maiden purity, 
Of high with low, celestial with terrene." 
"Not utterly unworthy to endure 
Was the supremacy of crafty Rome." 

The historical novel, too, has done its full share 
in fostering this passion for the past ; intertwining, 
with a skill that forms an era in our literature, the 
richest threads of modern thought and natural feel- 
ing with the fancy-work of an earlier time ; in- 
vesting with a wonderful charm the relics of a by- 
gone age of strange adventure and stranger super- 



22 



stition ; and leaving us in doubt, whether the 
boasted progress of modern civilization has not, 
after all, been backward. Akin to this influence 
of fiction has been that of the arts of design, em- 
ployed with beautiful effect in illustrating the 
earlier poets, and clothing with the associations of 
genius the monuments and scenes of a form of life 
that had ceased to be familiar to us. 

Something is also to be ascribed to the reaction 
that is following an age of religious controversy, 
an age of carping, pugilistic logic, of relentless 
metaphysics and unlovely tempers. Men of all 
sects are beginning to yearn after the quiet senti- 
ment, the placid, sunny, sweet spirit of the olden 
time. The victor and the vanquished, covered 
with dust and stained with blood, hasten home to 
be composed by soft hands and soothed by angel 
voices. The dove, hawked at and torn, hies to the 
peaceful cote, to smooth again her ruffled breast 
and rest her fluttering heart. A gentle nature tires 
of strife even in a righteous cause, sighing 

" for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit 
Of unsuccessful or successful war 
May never reach it more." 

At the same time a reaction of a different sort is 
evidently taking place, and giving a similar direc- 
tion to cultivated mind. The last half century is 
preeminently a period of religious charities, of be- 
nevolent enterprise. Societies and churches are 
organized for external action. Vast sums are ex- 



23 



pended by them ; and numerous periodicals give 
publicity to their transactions, and record their re- 
sults. It is an age of missions, of associations, of 
public meetings, of outward activity ; and, most 
clearly, in these respects, far in advance of any other 
since the days of the apostles. But with all of ac- 
tual good and of hope, which it includes, it has in- 
cidental and characteristic evils as obvious as its 
benefits. The inward life has not kept up with 
the outward ; the contemplative, in christian char- 
acter, has somewhat suffered from the predom- 
inance of the active ; the closet has been fre- 
quented less, as "the market place" has been 
visited more ; the heart has not been cultivated in 
proportion as the hands have been employed. The 
consequence is an inordinate passion for social, 
public, out of door life, and impatience of secret 
worship and self-communion ; the substitution of 
religious newspapers for Mason on Self Knowledge, 
Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Saints Rest, and 
Howe's Living Temple, not to say the Bible itself; 
and the prevalence, to some extent, of zeal without 
knowledge and charity without devotion. To such 
excesses must, of course, succeed sooner or later, 
a mortifying remembrance of the profound piety of 
a former generation, and, in minds not remarkably 
distinguishing, or vigorous, an unintelligent regret 
for the forms and occasions of devotion — the bap- 
tisms and crosses and images and ceremonies — the 
superstitions — of antiquity. 

Much also, more, in this country, at least, than 
to all other causes, is to be attributed to the ex- 



24 

travagances and divisions of an age of great indi- 
vidual freedom of opinion and practice. The crudi- 
ties of doctrine and the follies and absurdities of 
life, prevalent in large portions of the religious 
community, in an excited state of feeling, and under 
very little restraint from any wholesome and effi- 
cient public sentiment, have had the effect, on 
some minds, to bring into doubt, not only our prin- 
ciples of religious liberty, but our theory of gov- 
ernment itself, and to lead still more to hope, that, 
in a more fixed and permanent system of religion, 
we may find the true counterpoise to our demo- 
cratic spirit. 

The tendency of popular institutions to give im- 
portance to the mass of society presents, not only 
to politicians, but to the ministers of religion, also, 
a strong temptation to sacrifice principle to success, 
and, in the latter more particularly, to accommo- 
date their style of thought and eloquence to a vul- 
gar standard, under the very false impression, that 
men are able to appreciate only what they are 
competent to produce, and that uneducated mind is 
influenced and improved most by models of argu- 
ment and taste on a level with itself. Hence, in 
the Pulpit, the cultivated coarseness and gross 
allusions, the indelicate and irreverent familiarity, 
the affectation of colloquial smartness and flippan- 
cy, which offend good taste and shock the christian 
sentiment of the more intelligent and refined por- 
tions of the community, without commanding the 
respect or raising the character of any portion. 
From this degradation of the great subject of re- 



25 



ligion, this exceeding perversion of the sacred in- 
fluence of the minister of the New Testament, it 
is no wonder that men turn away in utter disgust. 
It is no wonder, if they, sometimes, hope to escape 
one excess by running directly into the opposite ; 
and, forgetting all evils but those which they feel, 
seem willing to submit again to a yoke, which 
their fathers were not able to bear. 

From these and other causes a great change has, 
undoubtedly taken place in this country and in 
England. Deep regret is extensively felt for things 
passed away ; a longing for the restoration of an 
age gone by; impatience of present duty, in the cir- 
cumstances and times in which we live, and a de- 
sire to restore the forms and usages of times which 
we had supposed not likely ever again to return. 

Recent events on both sides of the water must 
be regarded as important indexes of the current of 
public sentiment. Society, in its ever onward 
course, "is already winding round the roots of the 
mountains," whose tops the gifted seers but just 
now discerned in the distance. It seemed impos- 
sible that popery should ever be engrafted on our 
American institutions. We did not think that 
such extremes of authority and liberty could possi- 
bly meet. Exclusiveness and bigotry seemed to 
have nothing in common with our notions of indi- 
vidual right and freedom. Formalism appeared to 
be the natural opposite of Puritanism. And we 
have refused to be alarmed, until we see colleges 
and cathedrals, under the auspices of Rome, rising 
from the bosom of our own soil, and sons of the 

4 



26 



pilgrims, subscribing to the creed of the scarlet 
queen, within sight of the surf that washes the 
Plymouth rock. 

Whereunto all this will grow may not be easy 
to foresee. But what our own duty is, at such a 
time, can admit of no doubt. When the spirit of 
society is evidently tending to bigotry and formal- 
ism, it becomes the ministers of Christ to fall back 
upon their original position. When exclusiveness 
and dogmatism are coming again into favor, it is 
time for them to show themselves "too catholic" 
for such a worship. Instead of studying to reani- 
mate dead forms and to reconstruct demolished 
outward institutions, they should be preaching 
truth, applying the vital energies of the gospel to 
the soul of society. Instead of founding a hierarchy 
and a church, with feasts and fasts, and divers 
washings, standing in meats and drinks ; instead 
of forcing society into forsaken channels, they 
should be converting individual sinners, and edify- 
ing individual saints — using their high spiritual 
powers, to quicken into life the elements of truth 
and love in individual bosoms. They hold in their 
hand the word of life ; they have committed to 
them the sovereign balm for the healing of souls. 
On their personal activity, under God, on their 
moral power, the Religion, at whose altars they 
minister, mainly relies. It is for them to say, 
whether the church shall be, as of old, a great 
temple, overshadowing nations of money-changers 
and refugees from justice, or a spiritual house of 
lively stones, elect and precious. It is not a time 



27 

to foster a religion of forms and outward circum- 
stance, but to avoid it ; to have no communion 
with it ; to contend earnestly against it. 

It is a great error to suppose, that we are in no 
danger ; that intelligence and superstition are in- 
compatible. The worst of all superstitions is that 
of entrusting the keeping of one's conscience to 
another — leaving the care of our own soul alto- 
gether to the bishop. And this is the superstition 
of a cultivated age — of a refined people. It is the 
self imposition of men accustomed to defer to the 
authority of the professors and students of art and 
science — men familiar with the maxim, that they 
are best qualified to teach, whose business it is to 
know — men, therefore, who commit their spiritual 
interests to the priest, as they commit their health 
to the physician, or their ships to the pilot. They 
have their own proper sphere ; and their pastor has 
his. They pay the charges, and he takes the re- 
sponsibility. And, if all does not end well, it can- 
not be for want of provision on their part. Thus 
moral responsibility is evaded ; religious anxiety 
is stifled ; inquiry is suppressed ; a venal priest- 
hood preach smooth things and prophecy deceits ; 
immorality and impiety are countenanced by the 
very men ordained to rebuke them. And thus a 
people, blest with the lights of learning and the 
luxuries of art, may be without God in the world. 

Happy will it be for us, if we be not destined to 
write a new chapter in the history of man — to ex- 
hibit the singular spectacle of civil liberty wedded 
to spiritual despotism — of a people, free to licen- 



23 



tiousness, seeking an asylum from self-reproach in 
the authority of the church, satisfying an offended 
conscience with dispensations from the successor 
of St. Peter. 

To preserve us from this unexampled fate, to 
avert this national calamity is the appropriate work 
of the Protestant clergy. To qualify themselves 
for this high duty is the proper discipline of the 
American divine of our time. 

If the view of the christian ministry held up in 
this discourse be just, it may not be inappropriate 
for me to conclude with a few words of advice 
suggested by the subject, to the young gentlemen, 
on whose kind invitation I appear here today. 

The idea of the clerical office, which I have en- 
deavored to present to you, is precisely that, which, 
it seems to me, you should most seriously ponder, 
and most earnestly strive to realize in yourselves. 
It is that of a body of men not leaning on the 
church, but rather, with divine assistance, bearing 
the church on their shoulders — not resting in ordi- 
nances, but ministering the spirit — not mourning 
the decay of old institutions, but breathing new life 
into dying souls — not contriving forms to bind and 
fix society, but new creating the heart of society 
itself. 

Your immediate duty is to make the most of 
yourselves as ministers of Jesus Christ. Let no 
man despise you. Remember, the chief reliance 
of Christianity is on the personal influence of its 
ministers. Not on your mode of worship, nor your 
place of worship ; but on yourselves. Not on your 



29 



regular descent from the apostles, but on your 
moral likeness to them. Not on any form of words 
or administration of rites ; but on the truths you 
teach and the life you lead. You are to represent 
neither the church, nor the people ; but the truth. 
There is a higher standard than the creeds ; a tri- 
bunal above popular opinion. The wisdom of an- 
tiquity is venerable ; but the true antiquity is the 
old age, not the childhood of the world ; and even 
this may not bind the spirit. It must not dictate 
to him, who is called of God to be put in trust with 
the gospel. The judgment of mankind is to be 
listened to with deference ; the feelings of men are 
to be treated with delicacy. But your ministry is 
not from them, but to them. Your appeal is to 
one higher than the highest of them. It is your 
divine commission, not to follow, but to form opin- 
ion. Your vocation is higher than to be ministers 
to temples, or administrators of ordinances. It is 
nobler than to execute the blind wishes of men. 
It is, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the aid 
of the Spirit of God, to inspire men with living 
principles, and awaken in them immortal hopes. 

The great business of your profession is to 
preach. The highest point for you to aim at, so 
to preach as to satisfy yourselves. There is no 
other practical standard. To a studious, growing 
man, it is a safe standard. It should weigh little 
what some flattering friend, some silver tongued 
goody, male or female, whispers in our ear. The 
commendation of the least and weakest is grateful. 
But the preacher is not to take his standard from 



30 



his people, however intellectual, or refined ; he 
should be a standard to them. To adapt one's self 
to an audience is high merit ; to adapt the au- 
dience to one's self is higher. And, though a min- 
ister may not reject the counsels of his fellow- 
preachers, and will often receive important benefit 
from them, he must not allow even them to pre- 
scribe to him. Men, the most interested in us, 
and the best qualified to advise, seldom consider 
very maturely the counsel they give, and can rarely 
look at the subject from the same point of view 
with ourselves. The preacher is to be his own 
best counsellor. He must be willing to assume 
responsibility ; he must presume to judge and have 
courage to act. Let him then study to satisfy 
himself. The man who has the spirit to attempt 
it, will find it no easy task after all. But let him 
try it. 

Once a week, or once a month, let him make a 
sermon for himself. The rest of the time, he may 
be content to satisfy his people. Often it will be 
found, that one sermon, well studied and carefully 
finished, will go a great ways ; it will preach, 
under other texts, for weeks afterwards. It fixes 
the character of the man for a time. It raises him 
to vantage ground for all his future efforts. It is 
a step in his advancement, one of the stages of his 
increasing hold upon the respect and affection of 
his people. It is an event in his professional life. 

The result to be aimed at, in this effort, is no 
collection of fine passages, painfully wrought into 
patchwork ; no curious pursuit of occult analogies ; 



31 

no wiredrawn speculations ; but the full formed, 
ripened fruit, rather, of the serious and patient 
study of some great subject, upon which his very 
best powers have been exerted, and the noblest 
minds consulted. 

It may not, after all, be the Sermon, to whose 
immediate influence the success of his ministry 
will be most frequently ascribed. But, the subject 
of influence is not always the best judge as to 
what converts or improves him. There will, not 
seldom, be as much in him who says a thing, as in 
the thing he says. The man, whose truly sound 
and great efforts have given him a place in our es- 
teem and confidence, beyond dispute or doubt, 
never ceases to preach to us, in the most imperfect 
discourses that fall from his lips. 

In sermons thus prepared, there is not only in- 
struction for the most cultivated, but excitement 
for the most indifferent. The principal subjects of 
the Gospel are never so pursued and laid open 
without touching profound sensibilities in all bo- 
soms. The preacher rises on the wings of his 
own thought ; warms with his own conceptions. 
Other minds are moved ; the deep springs of the 
heart are reached ; and living waters gush out. 
Such preparation for the Pulpit gives it dignity, 
and surrounds the preacher with a sacred atmos- 
phere. He seems to breathe the upper air, to hold 
converse at once with earth and heaven. He 
speaks as one having authority. Every thing in 
him and about him is, unconsciously, brought into 
keeping with the spirit of his high discourse. His 



32 



prayers, his parochial life, his entire character and 
bearing are in accordance with it ; for all flow 
from the same fountain of his heart. For him to 
live is to preach ; to preach is to live. 

A man may be gifted with no extraordinary 
powers ; he may not strictly be a scholar ; he may 
be no more than most of us are capable of becom- 
ing ; but so full of the great themes of the New 
Testament ; so dignified and yet so bland ; so 
subdued and reverent, and yet so firm in purpose 
and so noble in action, that the very scene of his 
life is sacred. The young speak in under tones in 
his presence ; the old look upon him as the sweet 
gift of God. His speech drops fatness ; his si- 
lence is society. He hath an unction of the Holy 
One, like the precious ointment upon the head, 
that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, 
that went down to the skirts of his garments. 

Herein, young gentlemen, next to the indwelling 
influences of the Holy Spirit, or, rather, I may say, 
in essential connexion with these influences, lies 
your great strength — in the personal qualities, the 
moral greatness, the truthful intellect, the Divine 
spirit of the Christian Preacher. 

What a noble figure St. Peter would have 
made, standing by the altar of sacrifice, and hail- 
ing with his message of heavenly mercy, multi- 
tudes of Christian worshippers in Solomon's tem- 
ple. What a subject for the painter St. Paul 
would have been, proclaiming the Gospel of the 
Son of God to the disciples of Jesus amid the mag- 
nificence of the temple of Diana. What a triumph 



33 

it would have seemed, of the Cross of Christ over 
the superstitions of the world. But Peter ex- 
cluded from the Jewish temple and in prison, is a 
nobler figure. Paul in the uproar at Ephesus, in 
danger of his life in the theatre, is a better subject 
for the painter. In the one case we see what 
greatness is, in propitious circumstances, and with 
the aids of art and outward influences ; in the 
other, what greatness is, unaided and alone, tri- 
umphing over obstacles, rising under oppression — 
the greatness of mind — the greatness of martyr- 
dom. 

You will not, I am sure, young gentlemen, sus- 
pect me of undervaluing the quiet spirit of christian 
love, the deep joy of a devout heart, the fragrant 
breath of penitential and confiding prayer, the 
grateful, holy musings of a heavenly mind. But 
be not deceived. These influences of the sweet 
Heavens distil as well upon the true worshipper in 
the simple church of our fathers, as under the pic- 
tured dome of St. Peter's. They are fruits not of 
outward forms, nor of consecrated places, but of a 
thoughtful intercourse with Him, who seeketh 
such to worship Him as worship him in spirit and 
in truth. The closet of a New England puritan 
has as much of heaven in it, as the cell of a mo- 
nastery. Your faces may be made to shine, and 
your lips may be touched with a coal from the 
altar, without forsaking the religion of your 
Fathers. 



iiy2RA5X.OF. congress 



022 168 945 8 




